07 Jun 2015

President Lt Gen. Seretse Khama Ian Khama says he welcomes FIFA president, Sepp Blatter’s resignation because over the years he had not been running the organisation to the expectation of the world community.

The President told BOPA in an exclusive interview recently that Blatter had over the years presided over an organisation rocked by scandals of corruption and bribery.

“FIFA has been guilty of poor governance, lack of transparency and a very flawed bidding process,” said President Khama.

He said in recent history, one of the countries that had expressed interest to host the World Cup mysteriously lost the bid in the first round of the bidding process notwithstanding that it had submitted the best of the two bids that had been produced.

“Now you wonder what was the purpose of submitting the bids and being assessed as the best if in the first round of voting they were out,” said President Khama.

That alone, he noted, was a clear manifestation of a deeply flawed process, adding that the world community had now lost confidence in FIFA.

“FIFA’s credibility is at stake now and if you are a leader of that body and all this mess is happening under your watch, surely the time is now for you to go,” he said.

President Khama said Blatter was 79 years- old and had been at the helm of FIFA for 17 years and standing for a fifth term did not auger well with good governance and best practices because he was no longer adding value to the organisation. 

He said the longer a leader stayed in power the more things deteriorated, arguing that in the case of Blatter, he failed to turn the organisation around because he did not put in place interventions to curb corruption.

He said again Blatter was certainly not the right person to introduce reforms given that while he had ample time to do so, he never did hence it was shocking to hear him talking about reforms, “and one would ask what has he been doing all along. I think it is really a good thing that he has stood down but I must say I am disappointed that Africa as a block, including our own Botswana Football Association, voted for Blatter with so much corruption going on,” said President Khama. ENDS